Rule Britannia

I'm in such pissy humour it's piçi really. I am not the least eloquent today and I can imagine this post will be offensive to many but see here, the beauty of me not caring is well, NOT CARING, all I feel like doing is hysterically scream Wednesday's approaching!!! at the top of my lungs but instead I must study bacteria and ways to sterilise lab counters and Petri dishes and oy, I feel so tired, so very tired, as the village Chief in Astérix would say after having been made to fall off his shield once again.

RELATED MUSINGS
I remember once reading abt one of the Gandhi women who said something along the lines of I've often thanked God for making me not pretty for I know that all I've accomplished in life was truly through my worth.

Good one, dahling! And so… believable. I hope they had good psychiatrists in India and that you availed yourself to one. Thinking abt that sentence though, it’s rather clear you didn’t for a) it’s rubbish and b) we all know that, as we say here, “much better to be healthy, rich and pretty than sick, poor and ugly”. Not to mention that the inference that everything The Beautiful Ones accomplish is due to their looks is more than a tad offensive. Of course they have it easier but at the end of the day they need to get off their arses as well, heart-shaped as they may be.]

And there’s this, who could forget abt Piglet?

THE STORY
In the summer of 1997 I laid my hands on a copy of a book by Tom Sharpe and soon after starting to read it I prostrated myself on the floor and prayed for a long, healthy, prolific life for him, and possibly a peerage. [So many less deserving got one, yes?]. Tom Sharpe is, if you like British humour at its best, an absolutely fabulous must.

Funnily enough, that book was Ancestral Vices, a story abt a PC social researcher [they're all terrible] who goes to a quaint English village to - well, let's say that at a certain point he takes lodgings at the house of a dim-witted woman who is married to a dwarf. Only, our hero being PC, he calls him a PORG - Person Of Restricted Growth.

I remember I thought Tom Sharpe was brilliant, PORG indeed, what a naff thing that is, how terrible if the world turned into a place where people used such expressions in all seriousness.

Ha!

I was listening to the radio a while ago and found out that in England a theatre group is rehearsing Snow White And The Seven Gnomes. *Shudder* Why gnomes? Because an association officially complained against the use of the word dwarf, an association comprised of – and then I hear this in Portuguese: People of Restricted Growth and I quickly translated it into English, PORG’s. So the PORG’s got together and managed to have the play censored.

Let’s all savour this for a moment shall we: censored. CENSORED.

And here we are, Tom Sharpe, the visionary.

I'm sorry, but what the fuck? If you're short you're short, not vertically challenged. If you're fat you're fat, not panicularly-challenged. You're black, white? Guess what. You're blind? Yes, sorry abt that but at least you're not invisual, as we say here.

There are all sorts of dwarves and they are medically defined. So now on the one hand we have dwarves who decide that they are not that at all, they just suffer from a certain lack of verticality (I’ll say) and are mortified that people will refer to them as such. They are the PORG’s, which is a far more dignified and honourable way of referring to someone. On the other hand, you have dwarves who protest recent advances in genetic testing and techniques which will allow for the genes that cause dwarfism to be altered/removed. This would create a healthy embryo – but it’s disrespectful to them, see? Because very soon, say, achondroplasia may actually be removed from the genetic map and then where would those healthy children be, deprived of the right to lead a life made that much harder by prejudice, genuine physical suffering, so much loneliness in some cases?

Hullo, I am the Lioness and I used to have psoriasis, which is a pain in the ass in general, and a pain in the knee in particular, and it’s vile-looking and makes my skin hurt when it’s very cold and causes people not too infrequently to behave as though I bring the plague and has had an impact (negative at that) on every aspect of my life. But I no longer am a psoriatic! No, as of now, I shall be known as a POAK – Person Of Abnormal Keratinisation; or a PORDH – Person Of Restricted Dermo-Health; or a POSAONSCDBOBMWABMHHVMS - Person Of Such Abundance Of Neutrophils She Cannot Donate Blood Or Bone Marrow, Which Actually Breaks Her Heart Very Much So.

*Phurballs*

I am not saying that it is a bad thing to be a dwarf. I am not saying dwarves cannot lead excellent, happy, fulfilled lives (though I can tell you in all honestly I am happy I am not one). I am saying that they have it so much more difficult on all levels. I am saying that to consider it a crime that I may choose to give my child a healthier, longer, less complicated life is just bullocks and actually demeaning. I have accomplished a lot in my life but believe me, having psoriasis has not made me any more noble, on the contrary. Suffering doesn’t really do much for our good character, suffering corrupts, and those who believe it makes them better are compensating as effectively as Gandhi Girl was. I am a good person DESPITE my psoriasis, it has afforded me no end of opportunities to be mean and bitter and envious and sullen.

Cystic Fibrosis, blindness, deafness, asthma, diabetes, dwarfism, psoriasis, glycogen metabolism diseases, would I get rid of the genes behind them if given a choice? Without a second’s hesitation and amidst much grateful crying. You want to have children with genes that code for all sorts of pathologies and conditions, even though that no longer needs to be the case nowadays? It is well within your rights as a parent, much to my chagrin. Just please don’t act as if anyone behaving differently is taking part in some novel Eugenic experiment. You were born blind and lead a tremendously happy life? Good for you, and not knowing what you are missing is bound to help (but then again, we also lack the overdevelopment of the other senses, we cannot echolocate to save our lives, or ride bikes on curvy roads with our eyes closed). You were blinded as an adult? Of course your reaction will be I wish it had happened sooner, I could have grown so much more as a human being, too bad I didn’t loose a leg and an arm as well!

CONCLUSION
If you’re a dwarf, it wouldn’t cross my mind to make fun of you just bcs of it (unless I were telling a very un-PC joke, that is, fair game and all that). But if you’re one of these silly dwarves, oh dahling hold on to your knickers bcs the force of my gale laughter might just blow them away. You happen to be unforgivably dumb and well, it is my birth right to mock you mercilessly. Also, your dangerous dumbness seems to be infectious and spreading, and I am personally offended by the world you are – effectively, it would seem - trying to create. [And do tell, if you happen to be Jewish, how do you live with yourself, you PORG?]

The Waterboys sing Old England Is Dying. As far as I can tell, seems like the Modern One isn't doing so well either.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Regarding this coming Wednesday, the 19th… Uzi would have turned 29. I don’t know how I will be, don’t know if I’ll disappear or write 10 posts. If I do disappear you’ll know why. You also know I always reappear. On Wednesday you can also go round to Cat’s, who is still having excellent news, and wish her and the kitten she’s carrying a wonderful birthday. Cat is lovely, she’s started the Butterfly Report, whenever she sees one she’ll send me an email describing it.